Category:Snow Dalek

If it's snowy outside, then rather than make a snowman, why not make a Snow Dalek?

Starting

Once you have enough snow, the most tricky part of a Snow Dalek is marking out the base.

If you want to be really technically correct, it's a fourteen-sided shape, seven panels to a side. The rear four panels make a slight curve, then there are two shape corners and a further three panels per side, making two slight curves, and then the last four panels, two per side, make a sort of upside-down "ship's prow" shape.

Once you've marked out this shape, build a shelf about two inches high, then build up the base, recessed by an inch or so.

Use a plank of wood or similar to flatten fourteen rectangulat faces into this base, and then add four small snowballs per panel, in a vertical column.

(Perfectionists might like to use an icecream scoop)

If you have a good base, the rest is less important to get right: a roughly cylindrical mid-section, slightly tapered, maybe with some sort of panelling, effect, then the "neck" which on the originals is a circular grille that the actors would peek out through, then a nearly-hemispherical head,

final touches

Once the structure is solid, and you've added your 14×4=56 snowballs (hence the ice-cream scoop) you need a gun, a plunger an eyestalk, and two lights for the head.

• The lights (or ears) can be made by pushing two satsumas into the head half-way.
• The plunger and ray-gun might be an actual sink plunger and an eggwhisk, or just a couple of sticks.
• The idea of a toffee apple for an eyestalk sounds good, but in practice it'll be too heavy unless to set an aluminium tube into the head, and slot the toffee-apple into the tube. But this would require some serious advance preparation. if you're going to try this have a fallback solution in case it doesn;t work: perhaps a meccano wheel on a rod, fixed to a ling angle girder. Of a stick with a circle of corrugated carboard pushed onto it.

Since you won't be able to get the definition for the neck without borrowing a set of plastic plates, the Dalek can be finished with a long (Dr Who?) scarf around its neck, which both makes it more "snowman-ny", and hides the lack of detail.

Things to prepare in advance

Icecream scoop, sticks/plunger, egg-whisk, whatever you're going to use for an eye-stalk, two satsumas. Base plan. Flat surface for flattening sides. Optional very long knitted striped scarf.

Camera/mobile, to upload with hashtag #SnowDalek.